Well, I survived another Christmas and it is almost time to ring in the New Year. I wanted to share our Przybylski holiday card and show you an “easy peasy” gift card holder. I did our holiday card on My Digital System and was able to personalize it to meet my hubby’s specifications. As many of you know, he has quite a collection of trains and believes that a person can NEVER have too many trains. With that in mind, this is the card we developed:

I was assisted by son Larry who helped rename the train from “Holiday Express” to “Norb’s Christmas Express.” There was no train track in My Digital Studio, so Larry went out to Clip Art, found track, and loaded it into MDS so we could meet Mr. P’s desire for train track. Then there was the issue of presents in the train. This was not a big problem until Mr. P felt the light blue present was too light in color and wanted it darkened. I worked and worked on “picking up” the blue present to change colors, but kept picking up the train or the snow instead. Enter Larry again and he was able to change the color to a darker blue. When I mounted the card on my card stock, I added “snow” on the house tops, tiny rhinestones in the center of 3 of the colored snowflakes, additional stars, and a bit of red ribbon. We are now considering reusing the train for our 2012 Christmas card and changing the background. We will see what develops! Now on to the “easy peasy” gift card holders.

I waited until the 11th hour before our Christmas, and found myself with several gift cards for the teens/almost teens in our family. I was trying to find an easy way to package them when I came across some 6” X 3” card stock scored at 3” that was left from a previous project. I ran a bit of glue up the 2 sides, leaving the top open. Then I took scraps of holiday paper and ran them thru the Big Shot with my 3” scallop square. I adhered the scalloped squares to the front of the 3” square “pocket, punched a hole for some cording, added a gingerbread man which was our official gift tag this year, and a snowflake or rhinestone. We then hung these on one of the Christmas trees. They were perfect for gift cards and the Amazon gift certificates I purchased for the avid teen readers. See if you can find them hanging in this picture

Stamp Camp starts next week! I’m working on putting the calendar in a presentable format. January ( Friday Jan 6th 4 – 9 PM, Sat Jan 7th 9 AM – 4 PM) is titled Winter Wonderland and features 4 outside wintry scenes. We have been waiting for 1 stamp that arrived today, so all 4 cards will soon be up on the blog. We will be working with glimmer paper that you will custom color yourself, as well as custom colored rhinestones!

I’m looking forward to an exciting year of paper, ribbon, stamps and dies. By now, you should have your new mini catalog as well as the Sale-a-bration mini. Sale-a-bration starts Jan. 24th. For every $50 in product you order from the big catalog or the new mini catalog, you choose an item from the Sale-a-bration mini for NO COST! I love the “free” paper, ribbon, brads, and stamp sets! This is the time of year to stock up – keep the date January 24th in the back of your mind! Check back in a few days to see the January Stamp Camp Winter Wonderland projects. And HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!